


louie’s christmas list: reasonable, boring, scarves

by Humanities_Handbag



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Louie "What Are These Things!? FEELINGS!?" Duck, Scrooge "I'm Actually Super Emotional" McDuck, Secret Santa, lots of scarves, mild salsa angst, scarves may also make an appearance, two idiots being idiots together, whoo boyo we are in for an emotional trial today boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 01:12:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13156011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Humanities_Handbag/pseuds/Humanities_Handbag
Summary: louie's christmas list had started off something along the lines of;1. a million dollars2. a private island3. a smaller mansion next to the big mansion"no," said Scrooge. "absolutely not.""it's a short list.""it's ridiculous." he taps the paper. "ask for something reasonable."and so Louie rewrites his list, glumly.1. scarf2. scarf3. a reasonable and boring scarf(he'd figured, at the end of the day, reasonable and boring people only liked scarves)





	louie’s christmas list: reasonable, boring, scarves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [procrastinateland](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=procrastinateland).



Louie’s Christmas list was handed over at exactly 8:39 pm two weeks before Christmas. It’s his single contribution to the holiday so far. Though if you’d asked him, he would have explained that he’d supervised with light hanging and tree trimming, and had been the first to poison test the tree candy canes that looked the most threatening.

Louie liked lists. Lists made sense. It made it easier to make sense of things. Louie didn’t understand people or life or money but lists?

Lists are easy.

“I’m sorry- you want what?”

“It’s a short list.”

“I see that.” Scrooge turned it over in his hand. “Only about three things. Three ridiculous things.”

Louie fluttered a hand over his heart. “You wound me.” And then, rocking back on his heels, he explained solemnly that “if I didn’t think you could handle it, I wouldn’t have given it to you in the first place.”

Uncle Donald had said that once about laundry and regretted it since. Louie had the mind of a steel trap and snapped up anyone that wandered too close in the rhetorics.

Scrooge snorted. He handed the note back. “Absolutely not.”

“It’s three things.”

“You want a personal island,” Scrooge pointed out.

“And a million dollars, and a smaller mansion next to your mansion.”

“Not happening.”

“You have enough to get it!”

“Money is hard earned, not handed over. I wont have you becoming one of those snob nosed heirs. You want these things? Work.”

“I don’t _want_ to work.”

“Then make the list more reasonable,” Scrooge reasons. “I can do reasonable.”

“So half a million dollars then?”

Scrooge pats his head. “Maybe ask for some new marbles.”

Louie pouts the rest of the night.

Making a list more reasonable is not something he’s been well versed in. And so disappointment is often his tune of choice. When he was five, he’d asked his Uncle Donald for a separate boat “for me time” and when he was nine, he’d written a letter to Santa requesting an air lift onto a tropical island to “take some time off from the fam.”

He’d gotten neither of these.

And so he’d sulked during Christmas Dinner while Huey and Dewey were enraptured in exactly what they’d asked for (a toy car and a Junior Woodchucks Badge Collection Binder).

“How can you be so okay with this?” He asks them. “Don’t you want exactly what you want?”

“I don’t want an island.” Dewey nodded along with his eldest.

Louie always wanted an island.

* * *

After twelve years of no private island though, he could see how that might be a little… unrealistic.

And so he scratches it out.

**Louie’s Christmas List**

1 ~~. Private Island~~

And writes in

1\. A scarf.

Scarves were reasonable, boring things that reasonable, boring children asked for. And while he wasn’t neither of these, his entire family was stocked with the most reasonable and boring of individuals, who would be sure to find him some sort of a reasonable and boring scarf to pack along with his million dollars and smaller mansion.

* * *

The list is returned to him again after their third trip to Egypt. There had been more to excavate, and the lost city they’d since uncovered was in need of advice on managing financials in the real world. So Scrooge had delegated and booked himself as an advisor for a three day expo.

At lunch, he pushes it towards Scrooge.

Huey and Dewey, flanking him on either side and busy shoving their second and third burritos down their throats, watch him with something of avid curiosity.

“Wait?” Dewey swallows. “We’re supposed to give you Christmas lists?” Huey’s eyes go large.

“We’re allowed to do that?”

Scrooge adjusts his glasses, looking over the one in his hand. “If you’d like something, I’d suggest that. Yes.”

“I didn’t think we were getting _anything_ from you!”

“I was expecting marbles.”

Scrooge snorts, but reaches across the picnic table to ruffle both their heads fondly. “You’ll get marbles if you don’t get me a list. And that counts for you too, Webby.” The two boys quickly divulge into plans about what they’ll ask for, Webby squealing all the while along with them (“gosh, me too!”) while Scrooge blinks down at the list in his hand. “ _No_ ,” he says. “Absolutely _not_.”

“But I made it more reasonable!”

“You added one reasonable _thing_.”

“I can still change it to half a million dollars.”

“No.”

“Mr. McDuck-“

“This isn’t a business meeting.”

“Uncle Scrooge, then.”

“Better. But still no.”

“What if we made it a business meeting?” He pat his chest. “I can get a tie. And those stupid foot blankets you wear.”

“Spats,” Scrooge seethed. He handed back the list. “Change it again.”

“Even the scarf?”

“Except the scarf.” His uncle stood. “I’m getting another burrito. Do you want one? Or would you rather have thirty gold pieces with that?” Before his nephew can bite back an answer, Scrooge is already stalking away.

* * *

“I think you hurt Uncle Scrooge’s feelings?”

Louie snorts at the middle triplets suggestion and waves him off. They’re sitting in the helicopter, the three of them buckled in and facing the front window. Launchpad cheerily presses buttons and swivels in his chair.

Scrooge is quiet, tapping the end of his cane in a distracted rhythm on the floor.

“Nah,” said Louie. “When you’re that rich you don’t need feelings.”

“That’s just it though.”

“What’s it.”

“That.” Dewey points. “You keep seeing him as money.”

“Because he is money.” Louie doesn’t get it. Don’t they see where they live now? Who they live with?

Webby had been quiet up until then, but she tucks her legs into a criss cross beneath her and leans forward, looking around Huey and Dewey to face the youngest of her three new friends. “I think he just wants you to see him as your Uncle?” When Louie casts the same, confused, patronizing look on her, she shrivels. Never good under pressure, was the newest fourth addition. Still; “Maybe if you asked for things an Uncle would give you, then he’d be happier.”

“But he’s not just an Uncle. He’s our _rich_ Uncle.”

The discussions end when they reach turbulence and Scrooge launches into a lecture on atmospheric pressure. Louie leans on his hand and thinks about reasonable things.

* * *

He rewrites the list again.

**Louie’s Christmas Demands**

1\. Scarf   
2\. Half a million dollars

After another long moment, he scraps the idea of half a million dollars because that only seemed to set Scrooge off more, so he erased that, too, and tried to work with the midst of boring and reasonable.

1\. Scarf  
2\. Another Scarf

Huey reads his list that night and his brow pinches. “You want two scarves?”

“No. I want a mansion next to this mansion.” He taps on the third request. “I’m using the other two things because they’re reasonable and boring. Like you. I channeled you and Webby and Donald and I figured that you’d all ask for scarves. Hence. Scarf.”

“I’m not boring.” It didn’t escape either that the first part of the pair hadn’t been refuted. “And besides, reasonable people don’t only want scarves.”

“Well then what did you ask for.”

“Camping equipment. Dewey asked for a video game. Webby wants cereal? Apparently her granny never let her eat the sugary stuff.”

“Well, I’m asking for a scarf because I know that you all secretly want scarves.”

“Sure.” Said Huey. He tapped the list. “Might want to change number three though.”

“See?” Louie affirms. “Boring.”

* * *

His Uncle Donald is absolutely no help, and really only served to make him feel absolute rotten. “You always wanted to meet your family!” Donald folds their shirts and hands him a pile to put away. They’re both in the kids’ room. The laundry basket, set down by the bed, is still warm from the dryer. Louie huddles closer to it. “What about a big family dinner? Or a photo album! Uncle Scrooge has plenty of great things in the attic I’m sure we could put together.”

“I want a private island for these reasons. Why would I want a photo album.” He dumps his clothes on the bed. They unfold. Donald gives him a look.

“Because it’s a good way to remember your history.” He gives another folded shirt to Louie, with a complimentary warning glance. Louie sighs. Shuffles over to his dresser. “Besides- your great Uncle’s looking down about it lately. You have to remember this is his first Christmas with a family and-“

“And shouldn’t that mean that he does everything for us. I mean- he hasn’t exactly been great family material lately. You guys didn’t talk for how long?”

“That’s our issue. Not yours. He wants to get to know you.”

“And I want a private island.” He dumps the shirt it, where it unfolds. Donald growls. “What’s so wrong with me wanting things.”

“It’s not wrong to want things.” Donald stomps over to the dresser and folds the shirt, shoving it far back into the drawer. “It’s wanting things from people who need things from you.”

Louie avoids his Uncle for the rest of the night.

* * *

Louie isn’t sure what to do about number three. He could ask for a Jumbotron in his room. Or a speedskater. Or some sort of exotic pet. Like a tiger. Dewey would be so jealous if he wound up with a real, totally-not-fake-green tiger.

He erases it and rewrites it a few times, and whenever he tries to bring it to Scrooge he finds himself backtracking and starting again.

Webby notices. Because Webby always notices. “Are you afraid to hurt his feelings?”

“I told you. He’s rich.”

“Yeah, fine, whatever, but are you afraid to hurt his rich feelings?” He doesn’t say anything. She beams; huge and bright and all Webby, who is basically the sun and the stars and the moon altogether, and makes him want to tell the truth, even as he clamps his mouth shut. She doesn’t know the sun and moon stuff. But she sees his jaw tick and her smile gets wider. “That’s good!” She says. “That’s super good!”

“Why is that good.”

“You care.” He flinches. She realizes what she’s said a moment after and apologizes with a quick “not that I didn’t think you did before-“ but he’s already clutching the list tight in his pocket and looking down.

“No. It’s fine. I get it.”

He was the evil triplet anyway. Why not live up to the name.

He hands his final list to Uncle Scrooge a week before Christmas. Scrooge blinks at it. “You want three scarves?”

Louie shrugs.

* * *

**Louie’s Private Christmas Events List**

1\. Webby things he’s heartless   
2\. Uncle Scrooge thinks he’s a money grubber   
3\. His brothers probably don’t like him probably for reasonable and boring reasons

* * *

Louie isn’t sure how Christmas will work. But he didn’t expect to be woken early in the morning to his Great Uncle shaking him awake. “Come on, lad. Adventure awaits” There were snow clothes passed his way. “Meet us downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

“But Uncle Donald-“

“We’ll be back before he even notices.”

* * *

Uncle Donald is not at all pleased with how the day panned out.

They know this, because when they walk through the front door of the mansion, scraped and bruised and still glinting with fresh we-nearly-died glints about them, they’re met with an extension of ire that they’d rarely had the pleasure of seeing. Not since they’d moved in with their grand-uncle, at least. Because the whole nearly dying thing is new for them.

But there’s quite a lot that’s new. Like the missing family holiday’s. Which was subsequently an extension of that newness.

“You missed _Christmas_!” It’s the first thing they hear when they shuffle their still snowy feet on the rug. Huey is rubbing the back of his head (out of sort of guilt and to ease the throbbing bump he’d gotten down the avalanche) and Dewey is shuffling his feet, trying to make it look like there’s more snow, even when there isn’t, and Webby ducks away to find her grandmother. Louie shoves his hands in his pockets.

Fantastic. First he gives up his million dollar private island and now fights.

“So?” Scrooge hangs up his bag by the door and takes the three kids’, doing the same. “The blasted holiday takes up my time from October till January anyway. I don’t have to give it anymore of my time.”

Donald looks like he wants to yell. What comes out is more like a desperate attempt at usurping the elderly man. They’d climbed the tallest mountain in the world. To Donald, the still unclimbed peak would be his Uncle’s forever growing superiority.

“Uncle Donald?” Dewey tugs on his uncles suit. “We didn’t mean to we swear-“

“You’re taking them to dangerous places, having them come back bruised and missing holidays.” He gestures to Louie. “You’re giving them unrealistic expectations of how things work! Life isn’t a rich paradise!”

“Unrealistic- you’re the one that got them there! Not telling them about me. Now they think I’m just a money dispensing machine!”

Louie feels his throat swell a little.

He wants to pill out his list and say see, scarf, but his Uncles are both on too much of a roll and there’s no stopping it now.

A second avalanche of the day is about to hit.

“I didn’t tell them about you because I was worried this would happen!”

“Maybe worry less! It does nothing for them.”

Seeing that he was quickly losing, Donald shook his head and dragged pitifully back to the place they’d begun. “But they missed Christmas.”

“Auch. Like it’ll hurt the lads to miss one lousy holiday! I had to miss twelve of them. You get to miss one.“

“It’s my holiday.”

“It’s everyone’s Holiday.”

“But this one is mine. I know it’s your house, but these are my kids and-“

“They’re not your kids. They’re Della’s. And if she were still raising them I’m sure they’d of turned out a great deal better and… we share them because they’re not just yours and… and- and-”

Mount Neverest had nothing on the cold that took over that room, then.  

Scrooge sees what he’s said a moment after. Processing his words with every and-

( _and… and… and…_ )

His grip tightens on the cane.

Donald opens his mouth. Closes it.

Huey is looking at his Great Uncle with something of horror. Dewey looks ready to cry.

Louie winds his hands together tight in his pockets and his teeth dig against his lip hard enough to push through skin. Something warm springs against his mouth, and he ignores it. His tongue is overtaken by rust.

“Oh.” Says Donald. Then: “… oh.”

Scrooge looks like he wants to say something too. But Scrooge McDuck does not apologize. His cane tapping is all that drags the four others out of their reverie, watching him walk away down through the foyer. Louie looks up and sees Webby at the top of the stairs, hands over her mouth.

He wants to tell her to buzz off. This is their family problems. Not something to put into her stupid stalker notebooks.

But when she looks at him, sunshine gone, all he sees is pity. It makes him feel ill.

He stands there until everyone else is gone.

And then he leaves, too.

* * *

Huey doesn’t say anything and neither does Dewey, but he can hear Dewey crying in the bathroom. The middle triplet had always been the emotional one, Louie thinks, because it’s easier to say that than admit that he feels the prickling of tears in his own eyes.

* * *

**Louie’s Private Christmas Events List**

1\. Everything and everyone sucked

        1a. Including Him

* * *

Donald is the first to come see him. He’d played it out in his head a few times. Came up with the perfect way he’d push his hands into his pockets and nod and schmooze and trundle himself away.

Instead he ends up falling against his Uncle. Donald smells like laundry soap and the hot spiced wine he’d helped Beakley with that afternoon. Louie inhales. “I’m sorry,” said Louie.

“You don’t have to be.”

“I do.”

“No,” says Donald. “You don’t.”

Louie presses his face flush against buttons. His hands sting. “You were a good parent,” says Louie. “You are a good parent.”

“…”

Louie doesn’t know if he does know, but he can hear his Uncle’s heart stutter so he hopes that he’s made something right in this all. “Do you think Uncle Scrooge hates me?”

“… No.”

“Does he hate you?”

“He’s always hated me.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know, Louie.” Donald sounds tired.

“… really?”

“No.” Still tired. But different. “No. Scrooge is just… new. To this.”

“This?”

“Family. Sharing his space. Maybe even bathroom schedules, I don’t know.” Donald must have sensed something (or skillfully changing the subject- something passed on well through the Duck genes) because he reached forward to take his nephews face and pull it back. “Your lip-“

Louie still hadn’t cleaned away where his teeth had dug through, and he licked it self consciously. “It’s nothing.”

“Hmm.” His uncle traced it once. “Let me get bacitracin.”

“I’m fine.”

“Go to the bathroom. I’m getting bacitracin.”

Louie sits on the counter while his Uncle treats a cut like a war wound, and thinks that he got pretty lucky in the parent department.

* * *

Scrooge doesn’t come out of his rooms on December 26th.

He does leave his room on the 27th, but only to butter toast.

On the 28th, Louie catches of glimpse of him in the library. His sideburns are a little too puffed out and overgrown. Like a choked garden -all weeds- and he’s without his normal spats and hat. He looks disheveled and cold and distracted, and Louie makes a list in his head of things he understands at that moment.

**Things Louie Wants to Say to Uncle Scrooge**

1. 

* * *

On the 29th, Uncle Scrooge comes to Louie.

Louie, to his credit, wasn’t expecting him. He was just waiting to gather up the courage to actually do something when Uncle Scrooge appeared. “Attic,” said Uncle Scrooge.

“What?”

“Meet me in the attic.”

“Uh-“

“You going to dilly dally all day or should I drag you along myself?”

Louie puts down the can of PeP he’d been nursing for the past hour and follows.

* * *

The attic is oddly small for such a huge mansion. With sloping towers above, it was hard to try and not bump your head on one of the grooves that arched downwards, and Louie did his best, but still managed to _klunk_ his skull twice on a plank. Scrooge didn’t turn around at the noise. Instead, he led him forward, through the trenches of old newspapers from WW2 and Vietnam and the stacked, dusty frames filled with achievements and awards. Forgotten maybe. Or packed away. Turned from the world.

“Here.” Louie nearly bumped into his Uncle when he stopped abruptly. Tapping a suitcase littered in old stickers twice. “Look.” Scrooge kneeled, and popped it open.

“Oh,” said Louie, once he’d figured out what it was. “… okay.”

The stacks of pictures would have made Webby drool. Della Duck looked up at him from under a layer of dust and through old silverfish bites. His mothers eyes smartly assessing the light she’d been pushed away from. Hello, she seemed to say, when Scrooge picked her up. Been too long, hasn’t it?

“I’m no good at holidays,” says Scrooge, passing his nephew a picture. There was a newspaper clipping pushed in the corner. His first successful excavation. He handed that to Louie, too. The paper felt too fragile under the boys fingers. Like it might turn to ash any moment. “I’m hardly made for families.” He sighs, heavy and shrugs, just as heavy. Just as weighted with what must have been years of practicing this speech. “Some people lose keys? I lose people.”

“I lose everything, too.”

“Not the way I do, boy.” He tapped the newspaper. Handed his nephew another one. “You were right, in a way. I became what I was after for a time. Gold is a losers game. No one wins, really, when there’s too few players. And it was rigged. And I forgot the other pieces were still following me-“

“You’re playing too many board games.”

His Uncle huffed what sounded like a laugh. Then: “there’s a point to this. I promise, there used to be.”

“Was there?”

“Yes.” He sat back. “I think it might be that I’m… that I apologize. To you. For…”

“You don’t know what?”

“There’s a long list. You’re better at lists than I am.” Louie holds down his smile. His fingers tighten around the picture, still in his hands. “I suppose I should apologize to your Uncle at some point. But if you heard anything that made you- I mean- I know I took you away for Christmas-“

Louie nods. “I think Uncle Donald needs an apology more.”

“So do I.” He tapped the picture again. “You can keep that one. I have more.” And he snapped the case shut while Louie tucked his mothers portrait away into his pocket. “Come on.”

On the way down the stairs he does a half turn to say “you know you’re lucky to have your Uncle.”

“I know.”

“He’s a good parent. Smart. Whatever I said-“

“I know.”

“And he’s lucky to have you.”

Louie doesn’t say anything to that one. But he does find the courage to say “we’re lucky to have you,” and then, “I’m sorry, too. You’re not just money.”

“Yes I am.”

They reach the bottom of the stairs. “You’re not.” Louie suddenly very much wants to hug him, but doesn’t. Not yet. “And we are. We all are.”

Scrooge squeezes his shoulder.

“I still need your Christmas list, lad. Unless you’re privy on scarves for the holiday.”

“Scarves are still good. They’re practical.”

“Sure you don’t want that million? I’m feeling generous.”

Louie shakes his head. “Scarves,” he says, and Scrooge winds his arm around his nephew shoulder, tucking him to his side and leading him down to the foyer.

* * *

They aren’t there for the apology, but both their uncles are at breakfast, so the storm must have calmed. They knew for sure after Scrooge passed the jam to Donald and Donald laughed at one of Scrooge’s jokes, and the three boys relaxed.

“I wanted to talk to you all about Christmas.” The eldest patriarch of the manor added a second layer of mulberry jam to his toast. “Your Uncle Donald and I thought it best that we do some sort of Christmas tonight.”

“Christmas is over,” Webby licked marmite off her fingers. Huey, sitting next to her, blanched. “It was done a few days ago.”

“Yes, Webbigail, but I’m rich. And I can have another Christmas if I please.” His smile arched into a tease. “That is, if its alright with you?”

She twisted her face up. Thought about it a moment. “Fine,” she conceded primly. “But I get first dibs on the candy canes.”

“Done.”

Louie doesn’t hand his uncle a new list.

He’s oddly alright with it.

* * *

A scarf.

That’s what he gets on the morning of the 30th (what they’ve christened apologetic yuletide). It’s been tucked beneath the bows of a sad tree that Launchpad had chosen. One of the last ones, he’d explained. Most of the trees had been reserved weeks before the holiday, and the man selling him the one currently in their custody had been nice enough to check in the warehouse for what remained.

Webby was off most likely shoveling handfuls of Cookie Crisps down her beak, and Dewey and Huey were side by side in a new sleeping bag, choosing which game they’d play first, and arguing over the characters and who’d have dibs (“they’re my games” - “but I’m eldest, yak brain!”) and Louie pulls back the white cardboard top to reveal the beige, wool scarf beneath.

His first thoughts should have been _look, a scarf_

Instead its: _this is going to totally clash with green_

Scrooge comes up behind him and touches the fabric. There’s a ghost of a grin on his face- amusement, and sorrow. Regret, too, if Louie looked close enough. “You asked for three scarves.”

“I figured it was more boring and reasonable than an island.” Louie handled the scarf roughly, turning it round. _Huh._

“Pah. Private islands are boring. Lonely things without a spit of adventure. No one wants that.”

“ _I’d_ want that.”

“No. You don’t.” Scrooge taps the scarf. “This, now this, you want. An adventurers scarf. A real adventurers scarf. And your Uncle has already assured me that more adventures are to come, so I thought I may as well dress you for the occasion.”

“I didn’t climb the last adventure.”

“And now-“ and he lifted one end of the long scarf out, “I have a leash, don’t I?”

Louie snorts. He touches the scarf again. It’s itchy. But it’s warm, and he pulls his hand back when his palms start to sweat. “So what? This worth three scarves or something?”

“Five. Maybe a hundred. Depends who you ask.”

“That good?”

“Finest Peruvian wool there is. Stitched on the mountains of the great summits by monks. I got it years and years ago on my adventure. ‘Fore you were born.”

“So… a hand-me-down?”

“A relic.”

“Got it.” He replaced the lid. “Thanks. I-“ he swallowed. “I do appreciate it.”

“I know.”

Louie sort of wants to hug him again. Even if he did only get him a scarf that totally-absolutely-tragically clashed with his coloring. 

But he doesn’t.

* * *

Well- he does later. At night. Chasing after Scrooge down the halls before the man can retire to his chamber. He launches through the dark air and clings to his Uncle and holds on tight enough to be a tourniquet. Tight enough to try and stop crying, crying, crying, but there’s no helping it by then, and Scrooge holds him back and says “I know.”

Because he does.

“Thank you-“

“I know.”

“You didn’t have to-“

“I know.”

“I don’t deserve-“

“Hush,” says Scrooge. “You do.”

“…”

“Say you know, Louie,” says Scrooge. “This is where you say you know you deserve that.”

Louie chokes.

“Louie-“

“I know.”

“Good. This wasn’t boring or reasonable, was it? Not as good as your own mansion but-“ 

Louie snorts a laugh through his tears and Scrooge presses his face against the top of Louie’s head, and the two of them stand there until the shadows grow thin and long and breathing becomes a part of life again. Everything evaporates with closed doors, and Louie tucks himself in besides his brothers, who are nary aware of the exchange.

* * *

**Reasons for Louie Hugging Scrooge**

1\. He’d been wanting to for some time  
2\. Scrooge looked like he had a stick shoved way up his butt and Louie had heard rumor that hugs sometimes helped with that  
3\. He’d looked at the picture of his mother again. 

* * *

3a. He hadn’t noticed her scarf before.


End file.
